Earth Day Event by SunPower

 Today's event featured women working at the innovative company SunPower, which day by day is shifting our world's reliance away from fossil fuel dependence and towards renewables! Each of the women presenting today came from a different background yet they all have found a passion for SunPower's mission. Firstly Ms. Brandie States, a regional manager for the company, discussed her role as a "revenue generator". She works more on the business side of the company, managing the relationship between solar panel distributors and installers. In an application of her work, she led a project that installed solar panels at a school in Nicaragua that had previously never had access to electricity. Next, Ms. Laetitia Barbosa, who is a module product engineer, someone who is responsible for resolving any technical or engineering issues with solar panels, discussed the different aspects of her field, lab, and desk work. She investigates issues brought forth by homeowners or businesses, and surveys the solar array, meaning a collection of panels in order to develop a solution to the issue. She showed us some analysis technology that produces infrared/thermal imaging.  Later on she revealed how solar panels actually work, their different components, and some small and large scale solar systems. Next, Ms. Jessina Riano, who came to SunPower with a communications background, showed what a detailed plan of a solar system actually looks like. The plan she presented involved placing over 2000 solar panels at parking and on the roof of a high school. Ms. Mara Leandro was the last presenter; she is a reliability engineer at SunPower (like Dr. Groth from day 2!). To ensure that SunPower panels are reliable, she develops methods to catch and prevent failures by running different types of tests. She focuses on junction boxes and connectors, which are located on the backside of a solar panel. Us participants were then tasked with a problem to figure out the energy production of a solar array given its productivity ratio, type of panel, and number of panels. After calculating its annual energy production, I found the production to be 25 years, which we then input into a calculator developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that converts the energy produced by a solar system, to day to day things, like how many times a phone could be fully charged with this amount of energy, along with other interesting metrics. To close off, we had a general discussion with the SunPower women which led us to touch on interesting topics such as solar cars and solar panels in space!

This event has probably been my favorite so far, as renewable energy and solar energy in particular are one of my favorite interests! I was most interested in Ms. Barbosa's work, as she is constantly testing solar panels to find anything that can be improved upon. In her lab she conducts a failure analysis on the panels to find the root cause of an issue brought to her attention by a home or business owner using solar panels. She reproduces the failure in order to test out which of her solution ideas would yield the best results. This constantly improves the overall quality and efficiency of solar panels, SunPower panels are 420 watts and are 22% efficient, meaning that 22% of sunlight energy is captured by the panels; while this may not sound like a lot, it is a step forward compared to older panels that only had 17% efficiency. I learned how solar panels actually harness the sun's energy. Photons from sunlight are trapped by solar cells, and then converted into electrical energy, which a silicon, found in sand, is one of the best materials for. The panels produce a direct current (DC) which is not usable by regular home appliances, so an inverter must convert it into an alternating current (AC). A fun fact that I had never known is that while solar cells may appear to be flat, they are actually textured with small spike shaped points. Two solar cells have a comparable voltage to a AA battery, while an entire solar panel, fitted with 72-128 cells has the same voltage as five car batteries! Another fun fact is that SunPower actually supplies the International Space Station with solar panels! Though STEM professionals like Ms. Barbosa and Ms. Leandro, play a major role in developing and testing the solar panels themselves, it takes people from all sorts of backgrounds to advance SunPower's global renewable energy goals. For example, I thought that an engineer is the one who draws up a commercial project site plan, but this was actually the job of a utility relations manager, Ms. Riano. Overall, today's event further boosted my interest in renewable energy, especially the engineering aspect of it and made me more aware of the intricacies of the process of shifting the world to solar energy.

Like yesterday's event, today I gained a deeper insight into how the cooperation and unique skill sets of different professionals is so crucial to facing a monumental challenge and finding solutions. Each person's contribution towards a collective goal plays a role in actually achieving it. That is why so many people find a sense of purpose when working in fields like renewable energy, because it is solving a global issue that is negatively impacting everyone around the world. Apart from renewable energy being so fascinating and just plain awesome, this sense of purpose, that I am helping to benefit people from all over the world is why I myself would be very interested in pursuing a STEM career in renewable energy, particularly solar energy. Additionally, it is a culmination of all the topics that fascinate me, engineering, materials science, environmental issues, and even chemistry. Ms. Barbosa really highlighted the problem solving and continual improvement, and redesign aspects of working as an engineer in this field. Climate change is an issue that unfortunately isn't going away any time soon, and is actually becoming more amplified by the day, so the field of renewable energy will continue to grow at a rapid pace, which means that the creative problem solving done by engineers will only become more and more important, moving forward. The major takeaway, which I can apply to pursuing a career in STEM, is that the skills of people working in STEM professions are particularly critical to solving the world's most pressing challenges.